The word “architect” is derived from the Greek arkhi — meaning “chief” — and tekton — “builder.” From its very origin, the profession carried a claim to authority: not just a builder, but a builder above all others. 

Today, the etymology still haunts the discipline: Architects are imagined less as firms of collaborators and more as lone master planners, singular geniuses whose visions tower over the communities they design for. Ego is encoded into the language itself, continuing to shape how the field valorizes its students’ suffering, with sacrifice demanded as proof of worthiness to join the next generation of “chief builders.” 

The license to even call oneself an “architect” is locked behind 13 years of work. The title is so honorific that unlicensed practitioners cannot use “architect” to describe their occupation, at risk of being prevented from ever gaining the license.

In the 1400s, Gothic cathedrals’ classic features — domes, arches and colonnades — required expert craftsmanship. By the mid-1900s, mass production largely removed material working from the baseline of architecture education, and computer-aided design software in the ’90s challenged hand drafting entirely. With all these leaps in technology alleviating the industry’s labor, why is the profession of “master builders” just as hard as ever?

Architecture is often seen by outsiders as relentless and difficult, which is rationalized by its demand within opposite disciplines — merging engineering and the arts. But this rationale fails to explain students’ regular all-nighters in pursuit of meeting professors’ unrelenting deadlines. The rigor is not about necessity; it is about preserving a culture of pride and grandeur.

With the advent of mass production, the “Great Architects” of the era lost the argument for their rule over the built environment: They were no longer able to monopolize the complexities of material construction. Pre-fabrication, plastic molded chairs and vinyl siding invalidated much of the material “genius” of architects, now available en masse. 

This sentiment still lingers in popular culture today, depicting architects as infallible one-man master planners. In both “Megalopolis” and “The Brutalist,” released last year, a one-man genius — the historically glorified all-encompassing “chief builder” — works to create paradise or a utopia in his own vision.

Every time a tool arises that simplifies the process, it also makes the means to design and construct more accessible to the non-professional. “Vernacular” architecture — the self-made homes of people — is completely separate from professional architecture and has long been understudied and ignored by professionals. After all, what’s more threatening to the “chief builder” than recognizing that anyone could do the same? 

This mythos of greatness creates an expectation of perfection that students and educators hold alike, much to the detriment of students’ mental health. According to a 2023 study by Archinet, 86.7% of people studying or employed in architecture felt the workload impacted their personal lives, and more than half said they had considered leaving the profession due to mental health difficulties.

At the USC School of Architecture, it is clear that the difficulty rests in glory and grandeur. Tight due dates find student progress exalted by professors or section leaders with impressed words of “great work in such a small timeframe!” To those oblivious to the illogicism of these short timeframes, the resulting praise further cements the exceptionality of the “master builder” and the profession for students. 

It’s either terrible foresight from these industry professionals to predict the constraints of the timeframe, or industry hazing by purposefully making projects with timeframes known to be too short. Just in these first few weeks of classes alone, architecture students have had to work multiple all-nighters just to achieve the minimum expected for studio sessions. Better work comes from better health, and nothing of excellence is made at 3 a.m.

Perfection is the expectation here. Requiring it in the first place highlights the “you need to work and suffer for it” mindset of architecture education. If students weren’t working themselves to death for some honorable badge, perfectionism wouldn’t be the expectation: development, growth and novel ideas would be.

On top of already pricey tuition, architecture students pay around $800 a year on materials and tools mandatory for their work, according to USC Architecture’s own estimate. To those with a thin interest in the major, this is enough to prevent some from pursuing a degree in the first place. For those who hold deeper interest, it is still challenging to rationalize the expenses and effort as needed for the esteemed license. 

Funnily, the suffering that current leading architects went through was equally engineered to be difficult, as today’s processes. Students are subjected to borderline torture, work through it, then take their place and do the same without question. The cycle repeats. 

As the next generation expected to uphold this status quo, students should have power over their own treatment. All that is needed is to speak up and redirect this masochistic cycle toward a new course.